4 hours ago
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Nigel Farage has always been keen on a “one in – one out” policy. At the last election, Reform won five seats. Two MPs, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock, have since left the party over artistic differences – ie, falling out with Nige – and have gained only one in the cold-hearted Sarah Pochin. Now they are back to their full complement. Five, it turns out, is the magic number. The race is on to find, not just the next recruit, but the next to leave. It could be anyone. Get too close to the Sun God Nige and you tend to crash and burn.
For once, the email from Reform insisting that Monday’s press conference would contain an important announcement was more or less accurate. Normally all you get is a parade of new councillors or a policy that is never going to happen. But this time Reform had gone all in. A room in a luxury Mayfair hotel. And Nige talking deadly earnestly about preparing for government. A job so important, it couldn’t be entrusted to any of his current half-witted derelicts, such as Richard Tice or Lee Anderson. They were really only there as cosmetics. To make up the numbers.
Step forward the latest defection. Not a half-witted idiot like Nadine Dorries or the sequinned Andrea Jenkyns but someone on the outer edges of being taken seriously. It goes without saying that Danny Kruger is deeply weird but he is – or was until this morning – a Conservative frontbencher. One of Kemi Badenoch’s shadow ministers.
No wonder Nige looked pleased to introduce him. If also a little wary. Slightly deferential. Danny won’t be nearly so easy to push around as the rest of the Reform MPs. Perhaps too, Nige might be a little twitchy of taking another Tory. He doesn’t want to make a habit of taking any old Conservative MP who has been spooked by the polls and decided to jump ship. If Reform ends up looking like a care home for the Tories then it may begin to lose support quite rapidly.
Danny is quite good at sounding sincere. He likes to consider himself a deep thinker. A man with a big brain. Other opinions are available. So Danny adopted his sad face. This wasn’t a moment of triumph, he said. He was here more in sorrow than in anger. He had been a Conservative for more than 20 years – a Tory MP for the last six – and he was here to say that the Tories were finished as a party of opposition.
It was game over. He didn’t seem to appreciate the irony that he was one of the people responsible for his party’s end of days. Austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss. Danny was a cheerleader for all four. But today was a new day. A tabula rasa. The sins of the past could be both forgiven and forgotten. Time to move on. Kruger may have not so long ago lauded the talents of Robert Jenrick but Honest Bob was now dead to him. For Danny, loyalty comes cheap.
“Britain is not broken,” he said. That might have come as a surprise to Nige. Farage has spent the whole of the summer touring the country telling anyone who would listen that it was. Moving on. It was the Tory party that was broken. Only Reform could bring the radical change that was needed.
David Cameron had let his country down. Theresa May had let his country down. Boris Johnson had let his country down. As had Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch. Worse than that, they had also let him down. There was no bigger crime. You get the feeling that almost everyone lets Danny down in the end. No one escapes his disappointment. Just about the only person to remain on Danny’s pedestal is Danny himself. No greater self love hath any man … It would come as no surprise were Nige to be the next to feel Danny’s disenchantment. So soon. Too soon.
Then came the questions. Unfortunately for Nige, the first was nothing to do with his new signing. Instead, it was about his curious financial arrangements regarding his house in Clacton. Here our great champion of free speech and transparency in public life came over all tetchy and opaque. He had seen a KC and everything was legal and anyone who said any different could expect to be sued. Only no one had suggested illegality. Just that he might have lent his partner the money to reduce the stamp duty liability. Strangely he wouldn’t even repeat what he had previously said about his partner being independently wealthy.
Next it was time for Danny to backtrack a little. When he had said Kemi was useless he had really meant to say she had been brilliant. He didn’t want to sound churlish. No one could have done better than Kemi. Except for Honest Bob. But Kemi had also been superb. It was just a thankless job. Mmm. That may be. Yet you won’t find many other Tory MPs singing her praises. Kemi being a bit crap was probably the one thing that everyone in all parties could have agreed on.
What you have to realise, said Nige, was that Reform was really an inclusive party. The most inclusive party. Anti-racist people are welcome in Reform, he continued. They could stand side by side with the others. So sweet. No one would be turned away. “You’d have been amazed by the diversity at our conference in Birmingham,” he added. Or maybe you wouldn’t. Almost everyone there was white. And Nige carefully stopped Danny from answering a question on same-sex relationships.
There was no need for a byelection, Nige and Danny agreed. His East Wiltshire constituents would have realised Danny was basically a Reform candidate last time out. It’s just he forgot to make it explicit. Besides no one wanted a byelection. That just left enough time for Danny to appeal to his new team mates. He might have previously suggested they were a bunch of dim chancers making spending promises they could never keep, but what he really had meant was they were on the threshold of forming the next government. And he was looking forward to working with them. Somehow you just know it’s all going to end in tears.
